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Measure Intangibles

This set of articles is about identifying and managing uncertainty to improve outcomes. Almost all investments are made under uncertainty, and many are made to mitigate an identified risk. Yet the cost of the investment is often the component of the value equation that is best known; the benefit and risk components are harder to quantify, but vital. One method we use is the power of your corporate crowd, since there's lots of evidence that a diverse group of people can outperform an expert in making forecasts and other judgment calls. Our method uses statistics to tap the collective knowledge and experience of all the people around you. It does this inexpensively and repeatably, in a transparent way that allows decisions to be supported by the known facts, plus collective intuition to fill in where facts are scarce.

How Good are your Estimates

graham

Forecasting (outcomes, benefits, risks) is fundamental to investing wisely. Most of us just don't get the practice and particularly not the rapid feedback.
The weather forecasting fraternity have used the Brier score for years to drive improvements. It judges how realistic you were in expressing your confidence by the width of your forecast range. Once you can measure your ability to estimate, you can train to improve that ability.

Estimating for Architects

graham

A presentation I delivered to the Enterprise & Solution Architecture meetup group in Auckland. IT Architects have to estimate many things at an early stage of development, when the cone of uncertainty is widest. This presentation suggests ways in which architects and other early-stage estimators can estimate both cost and value, systematically reducing the uncertainty.